Today's Stichomancy for Alan Greenspan

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis:

"You went and baptized me in that water?" he asts the preacher. The preacher says he has.

"Then," says Hank, "you done a low-down trick on me. You knowed I has made my brags I never jined no church nor never would jine. You knowed I was proud of that. You knowed that it was my glory to tell of it, and that I set a heap of store by it in every way. And now you've went and took it away from me! You never fought it out fair and square, neither, man playing to outlast man, like you done with this here pledge, but you sneaked

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]:

them. All her little life Tattine's Mother had been setting things straight for her, drying every tear, and unravelling every tangle, so that Tattine was pretty downhearted the day she discovered that there were some things that were quite beyond even her Mother's power to alter. It was on a lovely June morning that Tattine made the first of her unwelcome discoveries. She was feeling particularly happy too, until she made it. She was sitting up in an apple-tree, sketching, and doing it very well. She had taken only a few drawing-lessons but had taken to them immensely, and now with one limb of the tree for a seat and another one for an easel, she was working away at a pretty chime tower, that stood on a neighbor's land.

Down on the grass beneath her Betsy and Doctor were lying. Betsy was a dear,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri:

certain critics of criminal anthropology from repeating, with a strange monotony, the venerable objections as to the ``impossibility of distinguishing a criminal from an honest man by the shape of his skull,'' or of

``measuring human responsibility in accordance with different craniological types.''[2]

[2] Vol. ii. of the fourth edition of ``The Criminal'' (1889) is specially concerned with the epileptic and idiotic criminal (referred to alcoholism, hysteria, mattoidism) whether occasional or subject to violent impulse; whilst vol. i. is concerned only with congenital criminality and moral insanity.

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey:

"Where are your sons?" asked Hare.

"I don't know," replied the Bishop. "They should be here to stand by you. It's strange. I don't understand.

Last night my sons were visited by many men, coming and going in twos and threes till late. They didn't sleep in their beds. I know not what to think."

Hare remembered John Caldwell's enigmatic face.

"Have the rustlers really come?" asked a young woman, whose eyes were red and cheeks tear-stained

"They have. Nineteen in all. I counted them," answered Hare.

The young woman burst out weeping afresh, and the wailing of the others

The Heritage of the Desert